Habitat degradation and invasive alien species are two principal forces that
antagonistically interfere with native biological diversity of any region. Both the above
are widely reported from India. Despite well-intended fiscal commitments towards
biodiversity conservation at various levels, the ground reality is not always rosy. Lack
of timely and actionable information threats to biological diversity strips practical
utility from a majority of studies.
The advancement in information and communication technology that enables standalone,
distributed client-server or cloud-based applications, which access information
via web interface; opens hitherto unavailable options to conservation biologists. Mobile
computing platforms provide a means to seamlessly integrate concurrent conservation
campaigns while precluding duplication. With an in-built global positioning sensors,
wireless connectivity, multi-media capabilities, browsers, etc., mobile platforms have
the potential to transform biodiversity studies and boost conservation efforts. They
provide an affordable means of scalable and rapid biodiversity field campaigns.
The authors present BIOTA – a BIOdiversiTy App that helps to identify and flag
geographic coordinates of invasive plant species in India. The current release (Version
1.0) can identify 10 invasive plant species and record its location with time stamp on
Google map. BIOTA is currently developed for Android operating system and can be
downloaded from www.iiitmk.ac.in/cvrlei. Adoption of BIOTA by researchers,
students and conservation enthusiasts will help to rapidly generate information on the
presence of invasive species at various locations. This, in turn, will help to improve the
prediction accuracy of invasive species distribution and to generate actionable
information.
Keywords: Biodiversity, Field survey, Invasive species, Mobile computing
platform.